There are all sorts of varieties of insane extremists among the settlers. By “insane” I don’t mean that they’re aberrations from the Israeli norm. Just that in polite western society (not Israel, of course) these people would be viewed as nutcases and ignored. Only in Israel (and perhaps this happens in other religious extremist societies as well) are such people turned into prophets, prime ministers, and even esteemed academics.
Such a one is Prof. Hillel Weiss, who teaches not Hebrew literature, mind you, a term he banned from his department–but rather the literature of the Jewish people. You see Hebrew is the language and literature of the Jewish people. There is no other. Yiddish? Feh, jargon. Jewish literature in English? Derivative, degenerate and a mark of the bankruptcy of galut.
Professor Weiss teaches, where else, at Bar Ilan University. That’s also the home of such other wunder-mensches as Mordechai Kedar, who advocates raping Palestinian women as a deterrent to terrorism; and Gerald Steinberg, that convicted libelist who runs the fraudulent NGO known as NGO Monitor.
Here is what Weiss posted on his Facebook page:
Listen, Abu Mazen: you aren’t a people and therefore there can be no genocide [against Palestinians]. To exterminate you like a simple rabble is a mitzvah and it will be fulfilled finally despite the fact that the government of Israel still doesn’t accept its responsibility for raising mendacious international recognition of you [Palestine]. [This process] started with Begin ended with Gal-On. It contributed to the deception of the entire world and [increased] the popularity of these monsters [Palestinians] who rose up due to our weakness and lack of faith.
The quicker you [Abu Mazen] can concede that you are not a people and that your place is nowhere within the borders of the land of Israel, the better off you will be…as long as you evacuate the country of your own volition.
Weiss concludes his scholarly lecture with a reference to Deuteronomy 32:21, 43, which originally was meant as a curse against the pagan peoples who surrounded the ancient Israelites. But in the context in which Weiss invokes the verse, it’s deeply Islamophobic, essentially calling Islam a pagan, “villanous” religion. This is eliminationism of the purest sort:
They have roused Me to jealousy with a no-god; they have provoked Me with their vanities; and I will rouse them to jealousy with a no-people; I will provoke them with a villanous nation…
Nations, celebrate His people; for He avenges the blood of His servants, and returns vengeance upon His enemies, and atones for the land of His people.
Prof. Weiss is also one of those blessed Judeans who’s planning to revive the Sanhedrin, so we can return to stoning Sodomites and adulterers like in the old days. He can also count himself among the Chosen who hope to raze the Dome of the Rock and replace it with the Third Temple, “God willing.”
I swear if anyone in the comment section tries to tell me that this guy is a fruitcake who represents no more than a fringe of a fringe, I may be sick. You know that his views are embraced by almost the entire ruling coalition and that they’re being implemented by the government in every way it can. Hillel Weiss is the beating heart of both Israeli settlerism and Israel itself. What the good professor shouts from the mountain top and on Facebook is beating inside Bibi’s heart. They are one.
By the way, we should give credit where it’s due to Arab-American oil man, Jamal Daniel and the folks at Al Monitor, who see fit to publish the similarly incohate messianic ramblings of Yuval Avivi, who regularly covers this garbage in its pages. That a publication funded by an Arab-American would present such inflammatory drivel is mystifying to me.
H/t David Sheen.
Like the song goes
“I NEED A HERO”
someone who will do something to end our martyrdom
Those of us who are realistic
” Mordechai Kedar, who advocates raping Palestinian women”
What Professor Kedar said, is “The only thing that can deter terrorists, like those who kidnapped the children and killed them, is the knowledge that their sister or their mother will be raped.” This assertion was made by Middle East scholar Dr. Mordechai Kedar of Bar-Ilan University about three weeks ago on an Israel Radio program. “It sounds very bad, but that’s the Middle East,”
http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/.premium-1.606542
That’s not the same as advocating rape.
@ Fred: Oh Fred stop acting like a moron. Of course it’s advocating rape. Ask any woman you know what they thing about this statement & then ask yourself why it took a woman to tell you something you should’ve known yourself.
Why would’ve he have said it if he didn’t mean it? Do you think the good professor was speaking theoretically? Would you like to create a new category called “theoretical rape?” Puh-leeze.
Let me put it this way Fred: Do you think Mordechai Kedar considers deterring terrorists a good thing or a bad thing?
I will let you finish the logical train of thought after that for yourself.
I am not Mordechai Keidar, and I don’t like the man at all.
I think that deterring terrorists is a good thing. But it cannot and should not be done at any price, and raping the terrorists’ female relatives lies a long way beyond anything that would be justified in the name of deterrence.
I don’t know whether Keidar thinks the same, and frankly, I don’t think it matters much.
A much greater problem than Keidar’s personal opinions is the sad fact that too many people, of all political and religious affiliations, rush to promote what they consider “good things” without pausing to ponder whether the prices they exact from themselves or, more often, from other people for promoting those “good things” is acceptable.
@Elisabeth
I don’t presume to know what Professor Kedar is thinking. Go ask him yourself.
I do understand the plain meaning of language, and his quote is not an advocacy.
Professor Kedar know there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that Israel is going to have women systematically raped. You can’t advocate an impossibility.
@ Fred:
Are you completely out of your mind? First, the way for an “impossibility” to actually happen is for it first to be advocated. Then eventually it happens. Israelis have raped Palestinians during wartime as documented by Benny Morris. So it’s far from an “impossibility.”
You don’t even pass the smell test anymore.
Of course it is advocacy. It is prescriptive: If you want to stop these people, rape their women. When the doctor says “take two aspirin,he is advocating aspirin as a remedy. He does not usually say “take two cyanide caps” so he must think that aspirin is more efficacious than cyanide for the problem at hand. If raping the women is efficacious at stopping some violence, then he is simply advocating rape.
Impossible things are advocated all the time. The extermination of a people has been advocated and that’s a pretty impossible thing. There is nothing logically impossible about Israel advocating rape as a curative. It could be done. It is not like advocating 2+2=5, which is logically impossible.
Probably in the last 24 hrs hundreds of Moslems were killed by Moslems, but you are concern is one insane professor that did not kill anyone. Please find more interesting subjects.
But in the last five minutes ONE Israeli Islamphobe published ONE comment at my blog. And ‘that was enough’ as the Haggadah says. Yuck!
I like Al-Monitor as they give an insight into Israeli extremism you can’t find in European press coverage. I would rather have this stuff in sight and be aware of it than out-of-sight and out-of-mind.
J-ISIS to be sure. We need to remember there is more Jewish extremismt as a percent of the Jewish population than there is Muslim. And, of course, let’s not leave out the Christians who agree with Prof. Weiss.
Richard, I’m afraid that you are doing the same thing that conservatives are accused of: overgeneralizing by painting everybody who doesn’t agree with you with the same brush. Its black and white thinking. It the same as saying all Arabs are terrorists or all peace activists are anti-semitic Nazi Arab lovers.
There ARE shades of grey on the different sides of the political spectrum. Not being able to recognize that is either child-like or an intentional distortion to make a straw man argument.
I’m sorry to report to you that in Israel, Weiss IS considered a radical nutcase, (who has been disbarred) although he does have his advocates. What nutcase doesn’t? (as did Meir Kahana)
For example, here it says that Weiss does not recognize the jurisdiction of Israeli courts
http://www.haaretz.co.il/1.1554413
Is that the Likud’s position? If you say he represents a norm in Israel you are totally clueless about society here, and know about Israel only by reading your cherry-picked sources.
It is regrettable that Weiss is a professor at a recognized university. However as in the US there is academic freedom and there are many controversial and radical professors from whom we would prefer not to hear.
“However as in the US there is academic freedom …”
Unless one criticizes Israel or its war crimes at universities in the US – David Project, Hillel and AMCHA Initiative.
Nice, AJC’s hasbara tourism to Israel all expenses paid for university trustees/provosts. Similar to the travel arrangements by AIPAC for US representatives of Israel, ehh US Congress securing the national interest of “We The People.”
Oui, that is really a bunch of BS and you know it.
Mearsheimer, Walt, and Chomsky appear to be doing just fine.
Finklestein had a bit of trouble when he didn’t get tenure so he quit, but now makes money writing books and speaking.
And Israeli academia is chock full of post-zionists, anti-zionists and outright antisemites.
@ Jeff: I’m afraid the BS is on your part. Stephen Walt intended to become Kennedy School dean and will never receive this position now. THe only reason he didn’t lose his job is that he has tenure. Finkelstein had far more than “a bit of trouble.” Dershowitz essentially hounded him out of academia & DePaul cooperated. He didn’t “quit,” he was fired when he lost the tenure battle. Finkelstein will never receive another academic position, which is a terrible blow for an ambitious academic like him.
We could go on with scores of examples of other academics who either lost jobs, had their academic freedom or free speech impinged on, etc.
You clearly know nothing about academia, either how it works and what it entails. Better not to display that ignorance for all to see.
Richard, do you know that the idiot Dershowitz once suggested that Queen Juliana of the Netherlands released the “Three of Breda” because she had received pressure from the German government in Bonn? That release was and still is a standard procedure of the Dutch legal system when prisoners are deemed to be at death’s door which was the case then. The Queen cannot act unilaterally. There must be a medical report. There must be a court order which she can still ignore. I am sure that advice from the Raad van State and the Dutch cabinet was asked and given. That she would accede to a German threat is ridiculous. If that had become known it might well have been the end of the House of Orange’s rule. Dershowitz is totally unreliable if not unbelievable when it comes to politics.
Not to talk about the latest case concerning Steven Salaita who was supposed to start at University of Illinois this semester, sold his house, left his job at Virginia Tech, moved to Urbana only to get informed that there was no job for him after all. His private Tweets during the latest agression on Gaza didn’t please donors who clearly made pressure on the University of Illinois alongside pro-Israeli student groups.
○ Ehr Daw 2014 – Given on Rosh Hashanah, 5775
by Rabbi Shalom Lewis | Congregation Etz Chaim blog | Marietta, Georgia | Sept. 29, 2014 |
○ Rabbi: Exterminate All Muslims
○ Russell Tribunal finds evidence of incitement to genocide, crimes against humanity in Gaza | Mondoweiss |
@ Jeff: Weiss has been disbarred? A professor of literature disbarred? Do you even know what you’re writing?
You clearly know nothing about the racist views of the majority of Israelis. Read the regular posts I’ve written on such polls here before making false claims like this one. Weiss’ views on Palestinians are in the mainstream. That you also try to distance Kahane (note correct spelling of his name) from the mainstream by calling him a nutcase is also indicative of your blindness. It is you who know nothing about Israeli politics or the history of the radicalization of it thanks to the settler movement, which more or less runs the country these days.
Rabbi Ovadia Yosef pontificated that gentiles exist to serve Jews, etc. His funeral was attended by 800,000 Israelis. That’s maybe 15% of the Jewish population of Israel who physically attended his funeral. Was he considered a “nutcase” in Israel? If so, by whom?
Religion makes people say and do stupid things. Nothing else to say…
He fed upon the Mizrahi sense of persecution and inferiority complex.
BTW I WOULD consider Weiss to be a Nazi, apropos the last post.
I leave this paper for you to judge …
○ Zionist eugenics, mixed marriage, and the creation of a ‘new Jewish type’
By Dafna Hirsch The Open University of Israel
@Oui
Forgive my ignorance but what in particular did you feel warranted judgment or rebuke or in this paper.
I’m sorry to make to sick, Richard, but your claim that “Hillel Weiss is the beating heart of both Israeli settlerism and Israel itself” is pure speculation. Many “settlers” find his sentiment as offensive as you do, as do Israelis across the political spectrum. Stick to criticizing Netanyahu with his owns words. He hasn’t advocated genocide and you know that.
Also, where did Weiss advocate razing the Dome of the Rock?
Building the Third Temple without razing the Dome of the Rock?
○ Following the dream of a Third Temple in Jerusalem
Friday, August 18 2000 – 17 Av 5760
○ Forty days before Ariel Sharon led his followers up to the Temple Mount – Right-wing activists stepping up their struggle to prevent concessions on the mount.
Oiu, are you suggesting that simply awaiting the building of the Temple is somehow extremist?
@ djf: Bibi hasn’t advocated genocide? If so, only because he knows it will bring international opprobrium. You & I both know he’d exterminate & expel all Palestinians if he thought he could get away with it. I’ve already published here a 1988 quote from Bibi endorsing expulsion/ethnic cleansing. It’s only a few tiny steps from their to genocide. He’s too smart politically to take those steps, but it’s not from a lack of wanting to do so.
I kinda like the professor, he’s not fringe at all for Israel’s understanding …
○ Professor Weiss: I didn’t curse in Hebron, it was scripture |Ynet News |
“My words which were interpreted as curses were merely a quotation from Psalms 109,” wrote Professor Hillel Weiss of the Bar Ilan University to Professor Yacov Ne’eman, who heads the university committee appointed to determine whether Weiss’ actions merit a disciplinary hearing, even before the police investigation into the matter is concluded.
Weiss failed to specify which verse he was quoting, but he was apparently paraphrasing Psalms 109: 8-9, in which King David says: “Let his days be few; and let another take his office. Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.”
However in the footage of the Hebron incident, Weiss appears to have taken liberties with the source material, Weiss is shown saying: “May your mother be bereaved, your wife be widowed, your children be orphaned and may you be struck down in the next war and any memory of you be erased.”
○ Hillel Weiss: Speech to the Flemish Parliament in 2011
Richard, I have no qualms that you as a Jew are not “pro-Israel”.
Since your site is a blog and does not claim to be an objective news source, you don’t even have to pretend to be unbiased.
But I think you degrade and discredit your arguments when you bring, as cases to support your position, conspiracy theorists and outright crackpots.
Claiming that Weiss’s garbage represents Israeli policy and thinking is so off the mark it makes me wonder about your knowledge of Israeli society. I personally know of nobody here who believes this crap, I don’t think most people have even heard of him. It’s like me learning about life in Chicago by reading only the crime section of the local newspaper.
I AM NOT defending current policy and I think its settlement policy is wrong. But setting up straw men to make the argument? It makes you look like a clown.
Also, even the most cursory perusal of Barry Chamish who produced the ringworm film, reveals him to be a self-promoting right wing conspiracy theorist. Just look at his own website and you can tell immediately that he is a total nutcase. All kinds of delusional crap about a New World Order and about the Rabin murder. Much of his venom is directed again Labor and its precursors. His credibility is zero.
It is not good to broad brush or generalize. But to be anecdotal, I ran into this “Kedarite” viewpoint in my own family. It shocked me that it came out in the course of a long back and forth. It was underlying and in check otherwise. I began to suspect that this may be the case with many. Certainly this Gaza war brought some of it out into the open. It’s the same with virulent anti-Semitism. People know this is wrong but it slips out. In a society where the leadership encourages hate, dehumanization, and broad-brushing ( collective punishment), it’s easier for this ugliness to emerge because it’s not taboo. it crosses no line.
@ Jeff: What you’ve written is false. I am very much “pro-Israel.” But I am not a Yahoo or a Netanyahoo, if you wish. I am not a Likudist, not an ultranationalist, not a rejectionist. I am a progressive Zionist, which is very much “pro-Israel” as I define it.
Weiss certainly represents Israeli policy: yesterday Israeli police engaged in the worst violence at the sacred Dome of the Rock in years, if not decades. They did this because the police forcibly injected Moshe Feiglin, one of Weiss’ favorite settlers, into the sacred ground, infuriating Muslims. There’s no question Israel would destroy the Noble Sanctuary if it thought it could get away with it. The only differeence between Weiss & Bibi is that the latter knows he can’t destroy the Muslim holy places (but would like to), while the former would no matter what.
The problem with you is that you deny what is right before your eyes & it’s this type of moral/political blindness which will eventually destroy Israel.
If nobody “believes in that crap” then why don’t Israeli police force him to take it down as incitement? Why is Moshe Feiglin deputy speaker of Knesset? Someone who believes in everything Weiss does?
Barry Chamish had nothing to do with the documentary. If you put forward false information like this again, you may be moderated. I specifically reject blantantly false claims made here. I’d expect you specifically retract this claim. If you don’t, then I will have to consider how to proceed. If Barry Chamish wrote about this film, it doesn’t mean he produced it & you should know the difference. The actual producers of the film are clearly mentioned in the YouTube link I provided. They are Israeli Mizrahim.
When you make such false claims it is YOU who becomes the crackpot.
1. Hillel Weiss also in fact held an attorney’s license (although this was not his primary profession). The state requested that he be disbarred, but in the end his license was just suspended. If his views are not “fringe” on the Israeli spectrum, what views would YOU consider fringe? As you know, polls can be skewed. Do you apply the same criteria for “fringe” to the Palestinians? If, say 10% of Muslims support suicide bombings and jihad, would you not object to me claiming that Muslims support terrorism?
2. I stand corrected regarding erroneously associating Barry Chamish with the documentary. However my basic claim stands: that you use this film which takes certain historical events out of the context of the times and spins it into a conspiracy theory, then whip up a title which completely distorts the facts. I won’t get into a medical debate with you, since neither of us are experts on the subject, but in my understanding there is confusion here in the difference between local treatment and whole body radiation. If the children where in fact given whole body radiation of 350 RADs, many of them would have died of acute radiation poisoning. Nobody claims that occurred. All of the debacle is about the long term effects of the local treatment, and whether proper precautions were used, and whether the establishment should have known better.
3. When somebody says to me “clearly”, usually its not so clear. We could argue forever about academic freedom giving examples and counterexamples. Some people claim a conspiracy against professors who support creationism or intelligent design, thus suppressing alternative theories to evolution. I don’t believe that. You could also argue forever counterfactuals, such as what a professor could have become had he not been persecuted. The point is that academia both in Israel and US is as free as it is anywhere, given the cultural and political milieu. Where would you say academia is really free? In the Arab world?
4. Help me understand what progressive Zionism means to you. It seems to me that in the far left circles with which you seem to associate, Zionism itself is racism, being a worn out form of nationalism.
@ Jeff: I didn’t know Weiss had a law license. But suspending it is hardly punishment since he can get it back. As for Muslims or Palestinians, others can debate about their views. I’m primarily interested in Israelis and Jews in general. These polls don’t show 10% of Israelis hold racist views. Depending on the questions it shows 65-80% hold racist views. And this is true of numerous polls, not one. And polls conducted by reputable Israeli pollsters. So no ‘skewing’ I’m afraid.
Academia in Israel is not “free.” It’s in much deeper s(Yt than academia here. State funding is evaporating. Settler universities are opening for no real academic reason, but plenty of political reasons. Talented grad students are fleeing abroad for better climes and futures. Faculty are hounded into exile. Settler NGOs pressure entire universities to toe the Im Tirzu/NGO Monitor “Zionist” line. Very bad.
As for progressive Zionism, I’ve written essays on the subject here & I’m not about to offer a disquisition on the subject.
I’m not asking for your screed. I’m just saying, that you express contempt for Israel’s government, past and present leaders, the military, academia, and society (since 80% of Israelis are racists). So what exactly are you “pro”? The Poalim soccer team? It empties “pro-Israel” of all content. You’re in favor of something non-existent. It’s like me saying I’m pro-Martian. It’s like an anti-semite denying his antisemitism by saying 80% of Jews are thieves but he likes the good ones.
Enlighten me. I know that there are many ways to be pro-Israel, and you don’t have to be the Israeli governments Amen corner. But I don’t understand what you want.
Richard. Before the German attack on the Netherlands there existed in the polder of Wieringen a “Werkdorp Wieringen” where future Jewish settlers in the British Mandate of Palestine were trained in various aspects of agriculture. My sister and I spent two summer vacations at the Werkdorp before the German occupation of the Netherlands. The overwhelming majority of the trainees were progressive Zionists like you who would be aghast of what happened after WW2 if they were still alive. Most were politically leftists. A number of them escaped the Holocaust over the Pyrenees to Spain from which they were shipped at the end of 1944 to Haifa when Franco wanted all foreign Jews out of Spain. By agreement between the Axis and Allied powers these non-convoyed ships (I believe there were two from Spain) were not attacked. One of the survivors Chanan Florsheim has written and published a fascinating account of his survival and trek to Spain during WW2. Unfortunately I have only one copy (my English translation) available. Perhaps the German original of this story is still available somewhere (Amazon?). I can send you an electronic copy if you are interested.
Richard. I discovered that the entire English text can be got from Google. Go to Chanan Flosheim and click on “He who dares wins”.
@Dieter: I’d like to send that copy to my friend, Mark Klempner, who wrote about 5 Dutch non Jews who saved Jews during the Holocaust. The book would mean a lot to him.
I am glad that this Weiss character is saying openly what, looking at their actions in the last Gaza slaughter, must be living in many an Israeli’s heart. It will only speed up the alienation from the country by even ardent former supporters. One such one is Sir Richard Ottaway, the conservative Chairman of the House of Commons Select Committee on Foreign Affairs. During the recent debate in the House of Commons on the recognition of a Palestinian state he declared openly that Israel had finally lost his support. I would like to quote him at length (from Hansard) because it is clear that he believed (and probably still believes) many Israeli myths and shared (and probably still shares) many Israeli prejudices. So he rightly says that if Israel is losing his support it will probably lose that of many erstwhile supporters. People like Weiss are only helping this process along. This is what Sir Richard said:
“If the rest of the debate follows the tone of the three speeches that we have heard so far, it will be a memorable debate. The next few minutes will be personally rather painful for me. It was inevitable right since the time of the holocaust that Israel clearly had to be a state in its own right, and Attlee accepted the inevitable and relinquished the British mandate. In November 1947, the United Nations supported the partition resolution. What was on the table then was a settlement that the Arabs would die for today. In May 1948, Israel became an independent state and came under attack from all sides within hours. In truth, it has been fighting for its existence ever since.
I was a friend of Israel long before I became a Tory. My wife’s family were instrumental in the creation of the Jewish state. Indeed, some of them were with Weizmann at the Paris conference. The holocaust had a deep impact on me as a young man growing up in the aftermath of the second world war, particularly when I paid a visit as a schoolboy to Belsen.
…
In the six-day war, I became personally involved. There was a major attempt to destroy Israel, and I found myself as a midshipman in the Royal Navy based on board a minesweeper in Aden, sent by Harold Wilson to sweep the straits of Tiran of mines after the Suez canal had been blocked. In the aftermath of that war, which, clearly, the Israelis won, the Arab states refused peace, recognition or negotiation.
Six years later, in the Yom Kippur war in 1973, the same situation happened again. It was an emphatic defeat after a surprise attack. Since then, based on the boundaries that were framed after the Yom Kippur war, we have had three thwarted peace agreements, each one better than the last, and we have had two tragedies: the assassination of Rabin and the stroke suffered by Ariel Sharon.
Throughout all this, I have stood by Israel through thick and thin, through the good years and the bad. I have sat down with Ministers and senior Israeli politicians and urged peaceful negotiations and a proportionate response to prevarication, and I thought that they were listening. But I realise now, in truth, looking back over the past 20 years, that Israel has been slowly drifting away from world public opinion. The annexation of the 950 acres of the west bank just a few months ago has outraged me more than anything else in my political life, mainly because it makes me look a fool, and that is something that I resent.
Turning to the substantive motion, to be a friend of Israel is not to be an enemy of Palestine. I want them to find a way through, and I am delighted by yesterday’s reconstruction package for Gaza, but with a country that is fractured with internal rivalries, that shows such naked hostility to its neighbour, that attacks Israel by firing thousands of rockets indiscriminately, that risks the lives of its citizens through its strategic placing of weapons and that uses the little building material that it is allowed to bring in to build tunnels, rather than homes, I am not yet convinced that it is fit to be a state and should be recognised only when there is a peace agreement. Under normal circumstances, I would oppose the motion tonight; but such is my anger over Israel’s behaviour in recent months that I will not oppose the motion. I have to say to the Government of Israel that if they are losing people like me, they will be losing a lot of people.”
@ Ari Brand: Please try to use quotation marks so we know what you’re saying & what your source is saying.
○ [Source: Daily Harsard debate – Sir Richard Ottaway (Croydon South) (Con)
○ MPs debate Palestine and Israel
On Monday 13 October MPs took part in a debate on a motion relating to Palestine and Israel. This debate was scheduled by the Backbench Business Committee following representations from Grahame M. Morris, Crispin Blunt, Sir Bob Russell, Caroline Lucas and Jeremy Corbyn.
MPs voted 274 to 12 on division (Division 54) to approve the amended motion:
‘That this House believes that the Government should recognise the state of Palestine alongside the state of Israel, as a contribution to securing a negotiated two state solution.’
Watch the debate and read the transcript
The debate was opened by Grahame M. Morris, Labour MP for Easington. Shadow Minister (Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, Ian Lucas, responded on behalf of the Opposition. The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, Tobias Ellwood, responded on behalf of the Government.
++++++++++
Backbench Business Committee debate Palestine and Israel
The former foreign secretary, Jack Straw moved an amendment to the motion setting out that the UK government should recognise Palestine “as a contribution to securing a negotiated two-state solution”.
The amendment took the clear edge off the motion and complied with the lobby from …
○ Unilateral recognition of Palestinian statehood is not the quickest route to peace
By Jennifer Gerber, Director of Labour Friends of Israel | Oct. 10, 2014 |
○ Call for Agreement 2-State Solution at Cairo Donor Conference
○ UN chief Ban: Israeli occupation led to Gaza war | Jerusalem Post |
The Hansard version was probably still unedited. Among other things the word “prevarication” should clearly be “provocation”
“The presence of genocidal behavior and language, even if used in government circles, is not by itself sufficient to conclude that Protective Edge, despite its enormity, amounted to the commission of the crime of genocide. What the jury did agree upon, however, was that some Israeli citizens and leaders appear to have been guilty in several instances of the separate crime of incitement to genocide, which is specified in Article 3(c) of the Genocide Convention.
It also agreed that the additional duty of Israel and other parties to prevent genocide, especially the United States and Europe, was definitely engaged by Israeli behavior. In this regard, the Russell Tribunal is sending an incriminating message of warning to Israel and an appeal to the UN and the international community to uphold the Genocide Convention, and to prevent any further behavior by Israel that would cross the line.”
… highlights of the testimony were a report on damage to hospitals and clinics given by Dr. Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian doctor serving in a Gaza hospital during the attacks; Mohammed Omer, a widely respected Gazan journalist who daily reported from the combat zone; Max Blumenthal, a prize-winning journalist who was in Gaza throughout Protective Edge, and David Sheen, who reported in agonizing detail on the racist hatred expressed by prominent Israelis during the assault.
○ Is Israel Guilty of Genocide in Its Assault on Gaza? | The Nation |
○ Russell Tribunal finds evidence of incitement to genocide, crimes against humanity in Gaza
This is not just one crazy professor, but a policy of Bar-Ilan University,
Bar-Ilan University allows it’s lecturers to incites and call for genocide and rape. But when a professor expressed his solidarity with the suffering of both sides during the Israeli attack on Gaza, he received angry letters from students, and from Dean of the Faculty of Law.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/.premium-1.607888
https://www.facebook.com/Antifa972/photos/pb.110776862292025.-2207520000.1413503127./741561729213532/?type=3&theater